


Merintho

by BurgerBurgerBurger



Category: 300 (Movies), 300: Rise of an Empire
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon-Typical Violence, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, Femslash, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Love/Hate, Rare Pairings, Recovery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:21:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23544574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurgerBurgerBurger/pseuds/BurgerBurgerBurger
Summary: The Spartan queen's eyes rove her body from toe to hairline, penetrating and condemnatory, but the only emotion Artemisia reads in the subtle tug of her lips is conclusive disappointment.Shamefully fragile,says the queen without speaking a word.
Relationships: Artemisia I of Caria/Gorgo Queen of Sparta
Comments: 49
Kudos: 48





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Did I write this rambling gay Artemisia lives AU because there weren't enough ladies in the 300 universe? Yes. Also the sequel was generically bad and I wanted to fix it. I just love these messed up warrior women. Expect this to run about 4-5 chapters total, with irregular updates. <3
> 
> CW for past sexual assault, past non-con, violence, and graphic descriptions of injuries consistent with 300 and 300: Rise of an Empire. This will be Artemisia/Gorgo femslash, though it mentions past relationships they've had with men, good and bad.

* * *

* * *

**merintho-** ( _Greek: cord, line, string)_

 **merinthophobia** (noun) An irrational fear of being bound or tied up.

* * *

* * *

This she knows: the crone brings soup daily, a watery, black broth lacking in spice or flavor. The hunched, wheezing woman slouches on the edge of the cot, tipping the edge of the bowl to her chapped lips, attentive but unspeaking. The crone makes no noise beyond the rasp of her asthmatic breathing, sucking stale air from the drab, claustrophobic room. 

Soon the crone will change her sheets and bandages. First, she will open the shuttered window, allowing dust and light to permeate the unsophisticated space. When she does, the freshness of the breeze moves through her spidery white hair like a sigh of relief. 

_Red clay roof, mud bricks. Greek._

_Like home,_ Artemisia does not allow herself to think.

The dirt here is not at all like the Persian landscape, or the sands of conquered seaboards. Not at all like the rocking deck of her massive ships, covered in luscious carpets and the shattered skulls of those who've failed her. 

This infirmary reminds her of the First Ship, the cursed one, her cage, her suffering, her captors. Where strangers' sweat first stung her eyes and men whispered sweet nothings into the curves of her tiny ears-- where she wished they would beat her and treat her like an animal when they fucked her too, instead of creating a half-human monstrosity that sometimes deserved their love, their bodies, their groans, and never deserved their respect. They lacked the decency of consistent cruelty. 

(On the first day, the crone opened the shutters and a man strode by, chest bared but for a heavy red cloak trailing at his back. In her delirium she tried to scream; the fever wouldn't break and the shriek wouldn't come. She could not bellow her hate for Sparta. She could not flee or fight, but shook in the bed, thin fingers clawing at rusty, unclean sheets. She was in hell, whether she lived or died impaled on Themistocles' sword. Hades or Greece made no difference to her. The crone lifted the bowl to her quivering lips and said not a word as she choked, wide-eyed.)

Artemisia swallows. The soup is a disgusting Spartan concoction of pig blood and vinegar. She drinks because her body aches for nutrition, for sustenance. She can barely lift her head. Her flesh feels scorched by the midday sun.

_Pathetic. Pitiful._ _Disgraceful._

(On the second day, the crone had pried away the shattered clay cup with which she'd tried with all her wavering might to slit her wrists. But Xerxes' naval prodigy was too feeble to break even the soft skin of her forearm. She was tucked back into bed like a baby, and the remaining cups on the rickety table by her bedside were removed without reprimand.)

She sees her wound briefly each day, a gaping hole in her gut expertly stitched by a hand she does not recall. She remembers only black sails, the acrid smell of bronze and seaspray, and the satisfying release of a blade unsheathing from her body. She remembers waking briefly, tunnel-visioned and moaning, in the room with the old woman. Other looming specters hovered over her, but she could not distinguish them in the dark corners of her sight. 

(On the third day she rose from bed in the sunset hours. Gasping and hunched, she stood for only seconds, shuffling to the door as wobbly as a drunken deck boy, desperate to reach the wooden doorframe. Before her knees buckled and she collapsed in agony, she shuddered at the warmth dribbling down her front, pooling at her toes. She woke in bed with fresh bandages, another tacit gift from the crone. How she was carried back to bed, she could not fathom.)

The fourth day, humid and peaceful but for the distant clangs of swordplay and the wet thuds of blows on flesh, reminds her of her early years in Darius' palace training grounds. _(She struggles to stay present. Her mind wanders so easily in the heat, in the pain. A faint smile splits her cracked lips. Her mind dances.)_ It reminds her of hours spent sliding through shadows, listening with lowered, feminine, obedient eyes, on war councils and meetings to which she should not be privy. Slithering and toxic, perfectly innocuous, effective in her deceit. None of the straightforwardness or bullheadedness of the Spartans.

_A compulsion for war games with no head for strategy._

Artemisia pushes herself upright to her elbows, abdomen and back screaming as her weight shifts. _(With her mind foggy, lost in the past, the pain is far simpler to manage.)_ Her patience is as thinly worn as the flimsy gray garb _(dreary, like all things Spartan)_ with which they have covered her form. A yellow-brown stain leaks out above her navel from her movement. She reclines again.

The crone will return soon, tight-lipped and methodical in her work. It is time to change the bandages. 

Artemisia stirs, rolling her neck against the flat pillow. Suppressing the pain beneath her ribcage becomes less difficult with each passing day _(each wandering thought, each burning tremor)_ , but the wound still freely bleeds. It is infected, perhaps. She knows little of battlefield triage, but idly wonders if Themistocles was merciful enough to land a belated killing-blow. Undoubtedly not. Artemisia was never blessed with luck.

The door creaks open, and the crone begins her ministrations. She bends at the hips, strong and wiry, as her ashen hair falls against her patient's breasts while deft fingers examine the wound. 

Artemisia lunges forward, muscles straining. Her prison spins. The torn bandage in her hands wraps once around the crone's throat, binding their bodies together. She squeezes brutally, pulling down the other woman like a crocodile dragging its prey beneath the river's surface. The struggle sends shooting pain through her gut; she pictures red innards splashing on the floor.

"Who brought me to this hellhole?" she hisses. The crone's full weight presses against her chest as they heave together. The pain in Artemisia's stomach is excruciating. 

"My queen spared your life," says the crone. She hardly struggles. 

Even in the face of a disgraceful, anonymous death, her words are even-tempered. _Not a shred of cowardice. No sign of that asthmatic wheeze now._ Artemisia admits reluctant admiration, even in her delirium. Her vision blurs as her tongue touches chapped lips. She cannot overcome the darkness growing around her. 

"Bring me Gorgo, queen of Sparta."

A pinprick of self-fury alights in her fractured mind: S _he did not speak her queen's name. You betray your knowledge of Sparta, fool._

The crone laughs, loud and full, as if the shredded fabric squeezing the life from her windpipe does not exist. "No mortal commands Gorgo of Sparta."

Artemisia tightens the fabric. "Then," she quells the tremor of exhaustion in her voice, "your worthless life ends here." 

"An honor," the crone replies, "to die in my queen's service." 

A wave of darkness settles on Artemisia, heavier than the captive she holds against her body. _A wave. Always waves,_ she complains, eyelids fluttering. 

( _Even fury and embarrassment cannot force her eyes open. Her frail body fails her yet again. If the gods have any mercy-- but they don't; there are no gods: only men, only monsters-- the old woman will let her bleed her way to a final resting place._ ) 

The bandage slackens in pale fingers, and Artemisia unceremoniously loses consciousness, tar black hair dripping down her face.

* * *

She retches herself awake, so great is her pain. Sweat covers her face, her arms, her neck. Quivering, she sees her sheets soaked with blood. ( _Hers. Always hers. Her skin burns. Furious redness streaks up her stomach; her heart pounds and flutters like a drowning child thrown overboard._ ) Artemisia cannot see the exit wound from Themistocle's sword peeking beside her spine, but knows it reopened as sharply as its twin on her front. Every shallow breath insinuates its presence. 

She struggles to regain coherency: to tear her eyes from her undignified, reclined position and survey the room. ( _Where is that old bitch? She mocks me. She laughs. She must. I hear her.)_ The urge to focus manifests as her head lolling to one side, cheek flattening against her shoulder and pillow. Her mind spasms and pupils dilate. 

Gorgo stands impassive, mere steps from her bedside. 

Artemisia blinks hard. 

_Spangled and still. It must be she_ , _who else? Where is the crone? It hurts. She sees me now, like this. And how smudged the coal beneath my eyes. But where is the crone? Where is my armor? I want to go home. They hurt me here. The ship soldiers hurt me._

The Spartan queen's eyes rove her body from toe to hairline, penetrating and condemnatory, but the only emotion Artemisia reads in the subtle tug of her lips is conclusive disappointment. _Shamefully fragile,_ says the queen without speaking a word.

_(Gold halos surround her head, twisting and pulsing. More grand than that false god, that impudent child, Xerxes. The hallucination makes Artemisia's eyes water. Terrible and beautiful and-- it hurts. Her eyes. Everywhere.)_

She is cold, shaking. She cannot stay awake. Eyelids close, and tears slide down her cheekbones, murky with days-old charcoal. 

* * *

The cyclops, Dilios, stares at her from the doorframe. He does not hide his disdain. 

Several women obscure him from Artemisia's sight, busy cooking that disgusting stew and ripping new bandages into shape. There are four now who assist the crone: Elpis, Kallisto, Myrrne, and the rat-faced half-child whose name she can never seem to catch in quiet exchanges between them. 

_(She says nothing, just as in Darius' palace. Listening, learning, plotting. Here though, they suspect her. Here, even the rat-faced girl watches her as keenly and unforgivingly as Dilios, sharpening his blade with a whetstone. She wonders if the girl hates her most of all-- did she lose a brother or father or husband?-- until she recalls Gorgo. The kingless queen. Ruler of a nation of warrior men. Gorgo hates her most of all.)_

She feels cleaner than before. They must have bathed her while she was unconscious, but she is too weak to feel indignant. At least before, in her fever dream, she had strength. Now the effort of swallowing leaves her an empty husk, desperate for rest. She cannot tell if blood loss, starvation, or disgrace will kill her first.

The crone, Ligeia, abruptly commands, "Leave us." 

Ligeia wrings out the blood from the grey tunic in the heavy washing bowl at her feet, and does not glance up. Dilios lingers only long enough to see the others out, and closes the wooden door behind him. Miraculous, after what happened last time they were alone, that Ligeia bans her entourage from the conversation. 

"I had a son," she wheezes without preamble, shuffling toward the clay pot of soup. She rinses her red-stained hands diligently in a bowl of water beside it. "He was King Leonidas' second-in-command. Died at the Hot Gates. His name was Artemis. It's a blessing to be named after a goddess."

"Apparently not," Artemisia croaks. She glares at the ceiling empty-eyed.

_Why do you taunt her? She lacks the mercy and disobedient streak necessary to ignore Gorgo's commands. She won't end it. Wasted words._

The crone does not falter, expertly scooping broth from the pot to a bowl. "Perhaps not," Ligeia says. "But you share his name and goddess' blessing. Your arrival is an omen."

"Arrival? No, no. _Kidnapping_. Clearly, I share his cursed luck."

"Nonsense. Left for dead on a ship's deck with a sword run through you. My queen saw you fall. She tells me she was surprised you'd not bled out by the time she returned." 

_(A horizon of red and black sails. Left for dead on a ship, as helpless as a ragdoll. Always helpless. Always bound by another's brutality, another's clemency. The shame of it all. The unfairness. No wonder the bitch mocks her.)_

Artemisia sneers, "If Gorgo so fancied my armor, she'd only to take it."

Ligeia stares impassively. "You are worth more than Persian playthings. My queen says you are a daughter of Greece, and that I am to remind you of that."

_(Heat and calloused hands and screaming. She sees her mother's face, her sisters', her aunts'. They are pinned and bleeding. Only Artemisia is taken alive to the ship of the Greek hoplites. She welcomes death.)_

"Tell your queen she is mistaken. You are no kin to me."

"Regain your strength and tell her yourself. Until then, you will be treated as one of my daughters." She holds the bowl of soup to Artemisia's mouth, wrinkled lips set in a determined line. "Now eat."

The prisoner obliges. Without sustenance, she will never be strong enough to lift her sword to Gorgo's throat.

* * *

She loathes the gaze of her watchdog, Dilios. Uninspired by lust or fear, he watches her from the corner as bored as an ancient mongrel, kept too long in the lap of his master's luxury. She wonders if he's fucking Gorgo; he seems so tame. _Domesticated_ , compared to the others. The match would be logical, if politically foolish. 

_Gorgo would be a lover to behold._

The thought is intrusive and sudden. Artemisia closes her eyes, mouth pressing into a sneer. Perhaps her fever has not yet completely broken. She's lost all sense of time and logic, bound as she is in this Spartan hell-hole. She gently stretches her neck, staring at her warden.

"Don't you have something more interesting to do?" she asks. His face remains placid. "Some _one_ more interesting to do? The queen must be lonely."

Dilios sits unmoving on his squat stool by the door. He blinks at her. _Winks?_ Artemisia wonders how gruesome his empty eye socket is beneath the black patch.

"No answer? Did my Persians take your tongue too? Or perhaps they relieved you of your manhood? What little there was to remove."

Dilios had yet to answer her questions directly, though day after day her words grow more bold. The first week she refused to sleep when left alone with him until the steady whittling of his knife on a block of wood lulled her into a feverish slumber. When she woke hours later, he was gone and she was untouched. She later noted a crudely carved wooden owl in the hands of Ligeia's rat-faced granddaughter, Zosime, when she tidied the room that evening.

She gingerly shifts her weight to stare at him directly. Dusk casts an orange glow on the humid room. "You've never carved me a toy, cyclops. I'm a distinguished guest and you ignore me. What would the queen say? Spending all this time keeping me alive and none of it keeping me pleased."

"What do you want?" 

Her jaw slackens. After years conniving her way through Darius' court, Artemisia has learned from the masters how to school her face into stillness. But here, in the home-turned-prison of Sparta, injured and alone and chained down by pain, she fails. She slowly rolls away from him to face the clay wall and recover her pride.

"Something sharp."

Dilios says nothing in response, and silently leaves when Ligeia arrives with dinner. 

* * *

She watches through her tiny square window the people that pass on the street outside. Artemisia thinks she must be held close to the town's center or some marketplace considering the foot traffic. Once she even saw Dilios walking with other Spartans, carrying an animated conversation. She didn't know he could speak that many words. Though she eyed him aggressively, he did not look to her window.

If she leans the right way, she can see down the edge of the street: there is a partial view of white stairs and columns when people aren't blocking her line of sight. There are painted jugs and hanging sheets on a line, and the slosh of water in buckets. Further away, judging by the muted sound, there is a ring where soldiers train. Today the street is bustling. The noise and movement from outside the house overwhelms her in long stretches, or perhaps sitting upright is still too taxing for her wounds. 

When alone, she allows herself to feel disappointment. Disappointment at herself for losing, for her capture, for her slow healing. Disappointment at Themistocles for not even killing her properly. But more than anyone else, she loathes Gorgo for chaining her to this place. Her wardens leave her alone for long periods of time now, knowing full well she is still too weak to cross the room unassisted.

_The Spartan bitch must mock me at every pass. "The blood-traitor is still infirm. She couldn't escape if she tried. She'd collapse."_

Artemisia lays on her back, tired of the window and the passersby. From what she can see of Sparta, it is nothing ostentatious or grandiose like Persia. She wills herself to forget the ruddy roof tiles of her youth, and how the wind smells lighter sweeping across the Greek farmlands than it does laden with the salt of the open sea. She cannot recall the exact scent of Xerxes' stifling perfume or the way her mother's hair fell into her eyes when she rocked her daughter to sleep.

These thoughts jumble around in her mind, torrid and tangled, when Artemisia is left to her own devices. She grits her teeth, seething at Gorgo's selfishness, furious that her captor has locked her in here with all her carnage. 

* * *

She dreams of a terrible gale. The sails of her ship are torn to shreds, sun-bleached white like broken bones, illuminated by each flash of lightning through the dark. She slams against the wooden railing, ocean-spray stinging her face. The sea thunders against the hull, bloated bodies littering the waves. Spartans, Persians, Athenians, Hoplites, her family. She sees so many faces, eyes black a void, beckoning and hungry.

Bowstring cuts through the flesh of her ankles and throat as she stumbles across the deck. She slips on slick, oily wood, gagged and dragged below deck by some unseen force. The water level rises and she's choking, she's drowning in the darkness of the First Ship with awful hands all around her. The storm batters her, beset by saltwater and fingers around her neck.

Suddenly, a brightness appears. A golden halo, powerful, searing. A spear through the storm. A queen. 

Artemisia wakes with a tear-stained face, pre-dawn light shining down on her from the little window. She hastily wipes her eyes despite being alone in the room. Sitting with a groan, she props up her head to just the right angle to stare out her window. She hates her dreams. In the half-darkness, she thinks there is a woman standing on the stairs, still and unwavering, staring back at her.

She shakes her head, willing away her delirium, ignoring the burning pain from her wound. She closes the shutter. 

* * *

She is sitting upright today, as promised. The crone said if she was strong enough Artemisia could leave the room for a brief walk, accompanied by the women and Dilios. For a time, she'd wondered at Gorgo's endgame with her captivity. _Let me rot away until fever or suicide takes me? Interrogate and torture me the moment I'm well enough to last?_ So far the queen had ignored her presence entirely, barring the visit on her feverish first week in Sparta. Though Artemisia couldn't remember a single moment of time on Gorgo's ship, a fact that rankles her mind.

"It's a turtle," says Dilios. He holds the palm-sized carving out for Artemisia to take it, standing closer than he ever has before. She scowls, waiting for the joke to land. Ligeia and Elpis study her face from the foot of her bed.

_Because I'm slow? Something insipid about a shell?_ She feels anger welling up in her stitched belly. 

"I can only carve birds and turtles," Dilios continues. "I gave Zosime a bird, so you got a turtle. I'm working on fish."

She takes the turtle. Artemisia wonders at this man, a revered general of many battles, endlessly loyal to his dead king. And yet here he is, carving a child's toy for a Persian warrior responsible for the slaughter of thousands of Greeks. She could not reconcile the disparity in her mind.

"A noble gift," Elpis smirks. The graying woman fancies Dilios.

"What do you say, Artemisia?" Ligeia prods her.

"Thank you," she answers mindlessly. The turtle is smooth and fat, more of a land turtle than a sea turtle. _Is this some trick of Gorgo's?_

"You're welcome."

It isn't until he replies that she hears herself speaking. A flush washes down her face, embarrassed and frustrated at being distracted, at obeying Ligeia. _Like a fucking toddler._

"Your turtle needs work," she snaps. She sets the toy on her blanket.

"Aye," Dilios says. "The fish needs more." He holds open the door. 

Elpis and Ligeia slide themselves beneath her arms, careful not to touch her back wound. They say she no longer bleeds through her bandages at such an alarming rate, and Kallisto, their most skilled healer, whispers of the miracle that her insides are relatively unharmed. She calls it a blessing and Artemisia glowers.

She rises to her feet with a clenched jaw. The humiliation of needing these reedy Spartan women for support is unbearable, but she cannot miss the opportunity to see her surroundings, to map the city. Tactical advantage comes from preparation and planning: meticulous, brutal, and efficient. And though she wouldn't voice it, she was eager to be free of her room. It has been over a month of being boxed and bound. 

The noon sun is violently bright, but she squints and shuffles forward. The dirt is easier for her to manage than the cobblestones, but every step sends a twinge of pain up her stomach and spine. The muscles rent asunder by a clumsy Greek blade have yet to fully heal. Dilios lingers behind the three women, watching and waiting to intervene.

The Spartans in the street glance at her. She is an oddity being propped up by two older women. Artemisia meets their glances with a stillness and intensity. She judges with a combination of relief and disdain that these people do not recognize her. Her past is not public knowledge. 

She feels rage boil up. She is a god-maker. An admiral. A legendary archer. That Gorgo could not show her the respect due her station is a festering wound in her heart. For a moment, Artemisia contemplates screaming her truth to the crowded street. Perhaps some soldier or widow would show her the deference she deserves and slit her throat. She is an enemy to Sparta, far worse than Xerxes could ever aspire to be. These Spartans should be fighting for the honor of killing her.

But her energy withers, drained from her body like a wrung-out cloth. These people don't know enough to hate her. Gorgo has stolen her honorable death twice-over.

She says instead, "I'm tired of this." 

Her wardens wordlessly turn around, returning her to the room in moments. When Dilios and Elpis leave, Ligeia says, "You did well today."

Artemisia turns to face the wall. Her head aches.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes it takes a girl 3/4 of a year to update. Bless. 😌 Yet again, I am taking liberties with both the ridiculous canon of 300 and actual history. Such is life.
> 
> I have also named the Persian messenger/Artemisia's rescuer Yazdan. (How did they keep Peter Mensah on board with this for eight years but never gave his character a name?)
> 
> TW: violence, mentions of a lost pregnancy, non-graphic references to canon sexual assault.

This she knows: the thick purple rainclouds roll across the Spartan foothills like soldiers on their final march, and she will not be allowed outside for days. Her room is already humid and dark with the looming storm, and the Spartans outside her window meander back to their homes and under drab awnings, moving their drying laundry and stacks of parchment with calm efficiency. Soon the cobblestones will be slick with cold rain, and Ligeia refuses to risk her healing progress with a walk.

"One slip and your stitches will burst," the crone said.

Artemisia scowls and pulls up her grey blanket, leaning her cheek on the tiny windowsill. She can sit up for hours now, so long as she can rest against a wall, weak as a newborn.

She remembers when she was a child how it rained one summer, and her mother had a stillborn daughter, her little sister. Her whole family mourned at the funeral and she wept too, though she didn't understand her role in the ceremony, or why it had to be her small arms that carried the body to the pyre.

_Deliver her to the goddess, Artemisia,_ father said, his voice steady and low. He was raised outside of Athens, where they cremated bodies instead of burying them, and gave their ashes as offerings to the gods on Olympus. _Artemis Orthia waits for her return, and she blesses you for bearing her name._

Her little sister was small and grey and malformed, and the oil that anointed her forehead dripped down to her temple, heavy with fallen rain. She placed her body gently on the carefully arranged stack of oak, and before her parents took their torches to the pyre, she prayed, _Goddess, please accept my sister. She's just a baby, and she didn't do anything wrong._

Artemisia stares out her window as the first raindrops begin to fall, disgusted with her own earnestness. The gods never cared a lick for any mortal no matter how innocent, ever fickle in their amusements and blessings. In retrospect, it was best her sister died early: anything else was prolonging her suffering.

The hoplites took Artemisia a year later. They slaughtered her parents and turned her home into its own pyre, flickering bright with flames and gleaming steel, reeking of sweat and burning flesh, stacked high with the bodies of her family. The taste of ash turned to sea spray and they kept her chained below deck in the dark and damp, when she too was a baby who didn't do anything wrong.

Artemisia's thumb brushes against the carved wooden turtle in her lap and she bitterly thinks, _Artemis Orthia never blessed me at all._

* * *

Ligeia, Myrrne, and the healer, Kallisto, change her bandages again. They poke and prod at the wound, ignoring the shudder of her muscles at every sting of pain— she will not give them the pleasure of seeing her wince— muttering about the closing stitches. She stares at the clay roof and scowls at the thunder outside, and her wooden turtle hides beneath the flat pillow.

In Persia it doesn't rain for half the year. The sun reddens skin with no reprieve, the ground cracks and crops wither, the shallow wells dry up. She likes the harshness of it, the predictability. The wild sea storms always cost lives, not only from the violent waves breaking across decks, but because her less experienced fleet captains struggle against the squall, their hulls nearly capsizing, and she has no choice but to behead them for such blatant, shameful ineptitude.

Incompetence has no place in the great Persian Empire.

Now she cannot walk without assistance, and has been trapped in the blocky, claustrophobic Spartan home for three months with no weapon or purpose or allegiance.

She's bored not having anything to do. She can read and write and speak four languages, but she sits in an empty room all day without even cups to keep her company. She wouldn't try to slash her wrists with the clay again, she decided. She would wait for good, cutting steel, and it would not be her blood dripping rivers onto the floor, not when the queen awaits.

Even maimed the way she is, incapable of using her prodigious combat skills, Artemisia is deadly. Her mind holds details like the finest sieve ( _her mother wore her only blue tunic when she died; Darius favored cloying perfume of lily and camphor they day Yazdan carried her broken body into the palace; Themistocles had a splinter in his left index finger the night she took him onto her ship_ ) but her attention to detail is wasted here with nothing interesting to see.

"Bring me something to do," Artemisia says. "This room is nearly as dull as all of you."

"You will make a weapon of it," says Kallisto, shaking her head. Her rare red hair ripples like the sunset on waves.

Artemisia scowls, "Then bring me something to read."

Myrrne chuckles, deftly rewrapping the linen over her wound. "As she said: you will make a weapon of it."

"Stop fidgeting," Ligeia pushes her shoulder down. "Focus on making your mind and body whole again. Then we will discuss entertainment."

Artemisia groans and Myrrne smirks, tying the bandages in a crisp knot. She wears her hair short and is never gentle, not that Artemisia would ask her to be.

"Impatient," Kallisto says, and the fondness in her voice makes Artemisia's skin crawl. As if she is some child, some _pet_ , not the Admiral who kills people like Kallisto and her condescending endearment. Then she adds insult to injury, tugging up the blanket as if to tuck her in, and says, "Our queen will be glad to hear of your renewed curiosity."

Before Artemisia can bite out, _She is no queen of mine,_ Ligeia drops the old bandages into her bowl and declares, "Enough. We're finished."

The crone tenses slightly at the mention of Gorgo, the wrinkles of her tan face deepening, but Myrrne gapes as if Kallisto has unearthed a long-buried skeleton. The tingling thrill of a secret in the room is a homecoming to Artemisia, who honed her skills for subterfuge in the palace of Susa itself. Her eyes grow dark with the ambrosia of it, but she wills herself not to smile at the misstep. She watches hawkishly as the younger two file out into the downpour after Ligeia, backs rigid with guilt.

No one has told Artemisia why they bother keeping her alive, but she supposes at least that they have given her something to do. A mystery to unravel.

* * *

It rains so hard that night she thinks her wound reopened— though Kallisto said it sealed nicely: all fresh, pink skin beneath her wrappings— but it is sweat, not blood, that douses her.

She untwists herself from her sheets and blankets, stifling the claustrophobic panic that dances at the edge of her mind, the bile that rises up when she is bound. Her fingernails dig violently into the fabric, teeth bared as she pants. She will not be caught again, pinned and helpless, hurting in ways her young mind doesn't understand that will plague her forever and ever until she finally suffocates in it—

Thunder cracks and she inhales deeply through her nose, her wound stretching in agony, but the pain roots her again. She unclenches her fists, slowly removing her blanket. Her fingertips graze the knotted black thread above her belly button where the stitches are intact and unbleeding despite her thrashing, peeking out from where the new bandages shifted.

_(She remembers a woman in white with a golden halo and the vision haunts her waking hours just as vehemently as the first ship haunts her nights. Golden, not gilded, burning hot like a goddess of Olympus: one of the old gods, her gods, the first gods before the sands of Persia buried her faith. She was Hera and Aphrodite and Athena forged into one: a queen, overpowering and cremating her because she is only Artemisia, a little hunter girl with her bowstring and sharp tongue.)_

Artemisia has never said a word to Gorgo, queen of Sparta. She does not remember being found on the deck in a puddle of her own blood, or being taken to the royal quarters of her ship the way Ligeia says she was. She suspects this is a lie meant to garner sympathy, though there are hazy memories from her blurry fever dream like a burning, sacred beacon of the gods or an unheeded prophecy. She doesn't know what happened to her, and refuses to believe what they tell her.

"Fuck," she whispers to herself. "Fuck. _Fuck_." She tears at the bandages. She wants to shred them to ribbons because they are soft and clean but they are shackles just the same.

Once her whispers met the ear of an emperor-king, the gilded prince and master of the Earth. Xerxes heeded her, obeyed her, begged for her guidance like the lost mongrel he is. He is nothing without his father. He is nothing without her. Once she tossed coins into the sea as a child, cheap copper wishes that drowned like her soldiers at Salamis, and they were worth more to her than he could hope to be. He is as worthless as her father and mother who let themselves die, who let her be taken by the Hoplites, then the Persians, then the Spartans.

She only lives because Gorgo longs for her suffering.

Artemisia pulls at the bandages, knotting them tighter, too weak to even fray the fabric. Her nails cut at her skin instead, angry red lines where she claws at the edges of the bandages in frenzied, ineffective violence. " _Fuck_!" she pants, tears welling in her eyes.

She has to stay in this prison bed because she cannot walk. She has to let her wound heal because her muscles are too atrophied to rip it open. Her hands flop to her sides, blood beneath her nails. _They mattered enough to ruin me. They all ruined me._ She measured her worth by Xerxes' status and empire, by the blood spilled on his orders, by the lauded tactical genius that began as a whisper in his ear. Now she whispers to no one, and nothing ever comes of it.

Her flesh prickles with cold, but she stares at the ceiling with tears pooling in her eyes, and does not cover herself.

* * *

"Up," says Ligeia with a hide bag slung over one shoulder. "There are contests today. We will watch the archers first."

Artemisia turns on her pillow, black hair tickling her cheek. Zosime lingers behind her grandmother with a smile and Artemisia clenches her jaw, annoyed despite the prospect of leaving her room. She's never been so feeble, idly flexing the once-powerful muscles of her shoulders. Her core is too atrophied to stand without the help of stout Ligeia, much less draw a bowstring. Ligeia gives her no time to complain. She pulls a pale green tunic from her bag and over Artemisia's head, then ties thin leather sandals onto her feet.

She sneers, trying not to groan as the crone slides beneath her arm to help her stand upright. "Your archers are pathetic, bumbling, clumsy oafs. Why should I want to see them?"

Zosime peels the sheets from her bed for laundering, piling them in her scrawny arms. She chirps, "Perhaps you can teach them something."

Artemisia squints, gritting her teeth. Zosime is young and the most difficult to read of the five women who tend her, too doe-eyed and sincere to get anywhere in life. At least stone-faced Ligeia has secrets carved into her craggy exterior, unlike her open, naïve granddaughter.

The journey down the cobblestones is arduous, but their pace is much improved from her first outing. Artemisia tests herself, pulling as much of her weight off of Ligeia as she can before the pain is agonizing and she cannot lift her feet again. Ligeia says nothing at these hiccups in their path though she must feel the shifting weight, but consistently plods ahead.

They pass the stairs and columns that Artemisia can see from the edge of her small window, now crowded with people milling about, placing wagers and hawking wares. The air is charged with excitement, atypical of the Spartans in her experience, and even strangers nod to her when she catches their eyes. They either do not know who she is, or do not view her as a threat, and she still cannot decide which is the greater offense.

Sparta lacks the bright opulence of Persian markets: the noise around her is a steady thrum, a drumbeat with no modes or melodies, no lilting lutes or dreamy harps. People sit along the stairs and lean against the columns, fingers sticky with honeyed figs, and Artemisia curses her stomach for the way it churns in envy at the delicacy. She tears her gaze away before Ligeia notices. When they sit, Ligeia props her up against a column to keep her back straight and wedges in beside her. In the distance she sees Callisto haggling over herbs and seeds, and further still she spots Myrrne leaning across the flat top of a butcher's stall grinning up at a muscular woman with a cleaver in her hand and ample cleavage beneath her apron.

Dilios is nowhere to be seen, though he typically accompanies them when they go for walks. Across the crowded, sandy courtyard there are hay targets aligned in a row, and archers stand in the fighting ring just beyond it, stringing their bows and inspecting their fletching. Elpis emerges from the growing crowd and slides in on Artemisia's other side, wordlessly handing her a honeyed fig. She takes the treat with a frown, feigning disdain, but relishes the tenderness of its flesh and the light crunch of the seeds inside, all doused in sugary sweetness.

"Fine day for the contests. I'm glad the rain let up," Elpis says. Her graying hair catches the light of the afternoon sun as she turns her head and adds, "Dilios has an exhibition fight later. We must wish him luck."

"I hope he loses his other eye," Artemisia mutters between bites, and Elpis sighs but Ligeia grants her a single huff of laughter. The corner of Artemisia's lips tilts up before she grimaces again, well aware that she is nothing but an untrained dog in their eyes, a mongrel to be tamed and domesticated. She trusts her trainers very little, and trusts their mistress even less.

A man with a red flag shouts an order and the six competitors line up as tidy as their targets. As one they fire, one to each target, all landing on the bullseye. Artemisia rolls her eyes at their terrible form and the total lack of challenge. A blind boar could hit a target from this range. The man raises the flag and they step back ten paces, their line as tight and straight as the arrows they shoot. That is one accolade she can begrudgingly grant the Spartans: even those who are not true warriors can march in lockstep and hold a line as daunting as the walls of Troy itself.

It goes on and on until finally the men stand a reputable distance away and begin to miss their aims. Their grips are bent, their stances crooked; they do not account for the wind. Artemisia scoffs, chewing on another honeyed fig, this one gifted by Zosime, who caught up to them and hovers over her grandmother's shoulder, enthusiastically watching the two remaining archers in the distance. They fire and only one arrow lands, woefully low of the bullseye, but closer than his competitor.

The crowd cheers for the victor, but under the din Artemisia mutters, "These are meant to be Sparta's best archers? Your ability to wage long distance warfare has always been disappointing, but this is laughable."

Zosime leans toward her, casting a cool shadow over her face, her brow furrowed. Artemisia thinks the teenager will retort, quipping something about ingratitude in her whispery voice, but instead she nods and says, "You will have to show them how to do it one day."

* * *

The Spartans will let anyone wield a weapon, she comes to learn. As the king's favorite, she was granted many allowances in the palace of Darius that others were not, including training under Yazdan's expert tutelage. She was his only female pupil, and by far his most diligent. When he bashed her across the face she never whimpered like Xerxes, never wept or begged for mercy like the delicate, disgusting princeling.

But here even the women, the young, and the elderly train in the scorching heat. Even some of the farmers bandy about with shortswords, thought it seems half in jest as they putter around the hulking, towering bodies of the real warriors. They fight too, in their own rudimentary bouts, governed by a red-cloaked Spartan. She is surprised to see merchants and politicians debase themselves with war games, some with blades, some with fists, but then she has grown used to the Persian aristocracy who would simply order their soldiers to behead any peasant who dirtied their robes, let alone struck them. The nobility all think themselves Gilgamesh until the time comes to spill their own blood. Like their princeling, the worms have no mettle.

Artemisia walks the perimeter of the ring with the help of Elpis and Zosime, preferring to tour the rest of the massive courtyard when sitting became unbearable on her wound. She is pleased at least with her stamina, and the chance to map a new portion of the city is too enticing to refuse. Sweat mingles with the scent of smoked meat and ale and baking bread, punctuated by the foul ammonia of the tannery several streets away.

A man with burns on his hands who must be a blacksmith clobbers a hunched elder so hard he hits the dirt face-first and his blunted practice sword clatters several body lengths away. The red-caped Spartan beside them gives an uproarious guffaw before stooping to lift the man from where he fell. The three of them laugh together, though the old man is covered in blood and his eye swells shut, and their bout somehow concludes on good terms.

Artemisia tilts her head, eyes narrow. Here the only insult is holding back. It appeals to her at once, the notion that they must all begin the race from the same starting point, that all have the right to learn their own strengths and stand on their merits. Zosime shifts beneath her arm and Artemisia sneers at herself. Her mind wanders from overstimulation and exertion, and she forgets that she is a captive here, a ransom, a prisoner of war. Her wounds are being treated for some nefarious long game, some undetermined purpose they undoubtedly wish her to serve in the future. She is not connected to these people by any bonds that matter. They are her enemies. 

"There he is," says Elpis. She points to the main ring where Dilios stands barefoot in the sand, wearing only a white linen perizoma and his black eyepatch. His face remains serious as always, though he nods at Elpis as they pass. The crowd behind him abruptly shifts with excitement and intensity, electrified by something in their midst. Artemisia tenses between the two women holding her up, her eyes wide with shock.

Gorgo, queen of Sparta, enters the ring with Dilios.

* * *

She wears next to nothing too: her chest bound by familiar bandages above her own white perizoma, bright against her tan skin, and her dark hair is tightly braided from the crown of her head to the nape of her neck. Though she is barefoot and lacking silk or jewelry or armor, Gorgo steps into the sand as regal as ever.

"This must be a joke," Artemisia rasps.

Her handlers do not respond, instead taking a seat beside Kallisto and Ligeia on the shallow marble stairs that lead up to the baths. Artemisia suppresses a groan as she's lowered down, her wound screaming, and tries to adjust herself comfortably with little success, watching with curious horror as the scattered crowd in the courtyard flocks to Gorgo. She is one with her people and they are thrilled by the appearance of their widow queen, leaning into her presence like trees bowing to the gale of a summer storm.

"Surely, he will humiliate her," Artemisia murmurs. There are no female warriors in Sparta, least of all a pampered queen. "This is a farce."

"Hush," says Ligeia.

Gorgo and Dilios grip their right forearms together in greeting, trading courtesies for a good fight. A red-cloaked Spartan stands between them as if this match is no different than any other before it, his scarred face an inscrutable mask. In a gravely baritone he says, "Begin."

Dilios drives forward in a rush, trading blows with Gorgo like he would any man. She ducks quickly, dancing out reach before striking his ribcage twice and dashing away again, her braid slicing through the air. They trade scrapes longer than she expected, admirable glancing blows and clever footwork, but his reach is longer: he lands a hard punch on her side just above her kidney, and she staggers.

"Did she grow weary of watching from the steps and opt for a thrashing instead?" Artemisia mocks, but the other women are entranced by clash in the ring. Ligeia hears, but gives her nothing.

_Surely she will fall quickly_ , Artemisia thinks, _just let it be over and go back to your lofty palace._ But Gorgo springs back into her guard at once, hands balled into fists before her face. She lashes out, quick as a viper, striking his chin and the corner of his lip, and her knuckles return bloody. Dilios drops to one knee and sweeps her legs, knocking her breathless in the dirt. She tries to roll away and rise to her feet, but he pins her on her stomach, his knee on her back, one arm bent painfully behind her.

The crowd heaves in an exhilarated surge and time slows around Artemisia. She feels in her own lungs the soft exhale from Gorgo, her neck twisted up at an angle, half of her face coated in sweat and sand. Their eyes lock and Artemisia sees the gleam of terror first. It sends a shiver down her spine despite the blistering noon sun; it forms a raw shriek in the back of her throat at the thought of being bound, held down, choked and _trapped_ that way again, and she barely feels the heavy weight of Ligeia's scrutiny upon her. She is bound to another set of eyes, the one whose grief she mirrors.

Gorgo burns with the flint-spark of a memory that a man might mistake for embarrassment but a woman would know is panic, until resolution incinerates her dread and shame. Artemisia knows this story well: the song of rising and falling and rising again. There is no pride or honor it in, only survival. Artemisia hungers for the same strength, the same power; she yearns to never be helpless again.

_(Yazdan found her in the scalding street where she was dumped with all the other dock refuse. She remembers the blinding white sun overhead, and being too weak to flinch from this strange man as he lifted her to his chest. He had a halo too, radiant and calm, and he trained her to be strong enough to swallow up her tragedies. She would never look back at them. She would never be weak again.)_

Compassion has long since been choked from her body, but there is some hollow kinship that lingers, another cord that binds them together though neither asked to be tied.

_Gorgo could not defend herself, and she lost._

Gorgo's eyes flicker hard, not with loss but vengeance, her face peeled back in rage and remembrance. She whips her free arm around, sliding and rolling as her fingernails dig through the sand, and tosses a shimmering arc of it into Dilios' good eye. She bucks her hips and tosses him as he flinches, then kicks him in the jaw so hard his teeth click over the roar of the crowd, renewed by their queen's vigor and resourcefulness. Her body whirls and kicks, elbows catching the soft skin on Dilios' thighs and neck as he lurches back. She attacks in a mania, a roar tearing from her throat, and Artemisia can feel her heartbeat pulsing in her wound as powerfully as the day she should have died.

She gasps, mounting another offensive of flying fists. Dilios barely deflects her hands, forcing them into glancing blows, his back coated in the sand of the ring, hunched over and defensive. But he bides his time until at last he drops her in conclusive defeat: a right hook that sends her spinning to her knees, blood pouring in curtains from her mouth. She raises one hand to forfeit and the match is called by the Spartan overseer at once.

Artemisia's eyes flicker from the queen to the crowd, waiting for a mutiny, but they chant and bellow their approval: apparently surrender is an acceptable custom in practice bouts. It was an exemplary, gratifying fight that lasted far longer than most, or such is the crowd's consensus, and Gorgo lost nobly to Dilios. She is wise enough to avoid her husband's spiteful pride and the early grave it bought him.

New feet kick up dust in the ring as the queen of Sparta is hoisted to her feet by her subjects, and clapped proudly on the back by her Spartans. They give her a tunic and water to clean herself, and praise her performance nearly as much as they cheer for Dilios himself. Through the mess of shifting bodies, Gorgo stares back at Artemisia with grime and blood still dripping from her lips, her eyes as bright as the jade in Darius' palace and ten thousand times as hard.

Gorgo washes her face and hands with a rag and bowl of crisp water, and Artemisia remembers all at once like a rogue wave: an ugly, fragile thing she'd hoped to bury at the bottom of the ocean. Her breathing grows shallow and the memories pop and blaze to life like grease on an open flame.

"This bores me; take me back," Artemisia says in a rush, and if these Spartans knew her better they would recognize the sound of a woman barely keeping her head above water.

* * *

These are the things she most loathes: a Greek soldier, a Greek ship, and a Greek woman with pity in her eyes.

Ligeia will be in soon with her dinner, like always, and Artemisia slouches on the edge of her bed, sitting up completely of her own volition as if she commanded her body upright through force of will alone. She has not been the same since the day of the contests; she has grown crueler, more waspish, less reliant on the women who help her. When her wardens do not shy away from the sudden change she presses even harder: sharpening her words on them like they are merely whetstones for her use. It does nothing to allay her nightmares.

The vision returns to her at night when she cannot crush it in her mind's eye: the cold certainty of death, a sword piercing through her stomach and out her back again. Slipping in and out of unwelcoming darkness until there were green eyes and a golden halo and _pity_ that still torments her the most. The queen herself lifted Artemisia from the deck, both of them dripping blood and saltwater. Gorgo's legs were strong enough to carry them both, even with her dead weight and heavy armor and the top of Artemisia's feet catching against the wood of the gangplank. She was too broken to lift her head or cry out or beg to be left alone.

"To my ship," Gorgo ordered her away like cargo, handing her off to a soldier. Her voice was low like a growling predator, a woman who brooked no argument. "Fetch a healer."

The other ship is a haze in her memory, but even in her dreams it reeks of Spartan ideals and aesthetic. She recalls thinking before another blackout, _No character, no splendor. I am going to die on this hideous Greek ship like I should have the first time._

But when she woke again it was Gorgo herself who bathed her gory skin, working around the healers with a rag and a bowl of crisp water, gentle and attentive though her own knuckles were bruised and bloody from the battle above deck. "Come back with me," she whispered through Artemisia's matted hair as soon as she saw her eyelids flutter open. "You do not belong here."

And all of Artemisia's fractures broke at once, a thousand splinters forming the shape of the woman she should have been before the Hoplites emptied her of everything and the Persians filled her with venom instead. She wept in Gorgo's lap, clinging to her forearm and neck as she curled over her, the guttural sob of a dying thing who once dreamed of a happier future, until even that innocence was snuffed out. Gorgo kissed her cheek and her forehead and her palm, careless of the blood, and the torchlight overhead cast a golden halo in her hair.

Ligeia enters the room after a single knock, carrying the bowl of black broth. If she is surprised to see Artemisia sitting up without assistance she doesn't show it.

The crone says, "My queen requests an audience."

Artemisia stares at her hands, the traitorous fingers that clung to Gorgo in her moment of greatest weakness. Her face twists into a spiteful snarl, and she spits at Ligeia's feet.


End file.
